ABSTRACT

Since the 2008 financial crash the expansion of neoliberalism has had an enormous impact on nature-society relations around the world. In response, various environmental movements have emerged opposing the neoliberal restructuring of environmental policies using arguments that often bridge traditional divisions between the environmental and labour agendas.

The Right to Nature explores the differing experiences of a number of environmental-social movements and struggles from the point of view of both activists and academics. This collection attempts to both document the social-ecological impacts of neoliberal attempts to exploit non-human nature in the post-crisis context and to analyse the opposition of emerging environmental movements and their demands for a radically different production of nature based on social needs and environmental justice. It also provides a necessary space for the exchange of ideas and experiences between academics and activists and aims to motivate further academic-activist collaborations around alternative and counter-hegemonic re-thinking of environmental politics.

This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and activists interested in environmental policy, environmental justice, social and environmental movements.

chapter |13 pages

Introduction

Neoliberalism and environmental movements across the world after the 2008 financial crash: defending the right to nature

part I|83 pages

Extractivism and environmental justice movements

chapter 1|12 pages

Self-determination as resistance

Re-asserting control over natural resources in Colombia

chapter 2|14 pages

Petro-politics and local natural resource protection

Grassroots opposition to the keystone XL pipeline in Nebraska

chapter 3|13 pages

Navigating state-led extractivism in Ecuador and Russia

Fluid identities and agendas of socio-environmental movements

chapter 4|14 pages

Beyond winning and losing

The rise of the social movement against mega-mining projects in Northern Greece

chapter 5|14 pages

Land rights and justice in neoliberal Mozambique

The case of Afungi community relocations

chapter 6|14 pages

Possibilities and pitfalls of environmental justice action

Learning from Ros¸ia Montanaˇ and Yaigojé Apaporis anti-mining struggles

part II|69 pages

Green struggles against capitalist urbanization and infrastructure construction

chapter 9|10 pages

Access to information and the construction of sustainability discourse

The case of the Bus Rapid Transit Transolímpica, in Rio de Janeiro

chapter 11|13 pages

Environmental justice claims and dimensions in anti-megaproject campaigns in Europe

The case of the Forum Against Unnecessary and Imposed Megaprojects

part III|79 pages

The economic valuation of nature

chapter 12|14 pages

Isolation and abstraction to tackle deforestation

The problem of theory as a practical problem in environmental issues

chapter 13|15 pages

Natural capital accounting (NCA)

Roles in corporate environmental stewardship

chapter 14|10 pages

Offsetting for whom?

chapter 15|11 pages

Nature is our right

Framing a new nature protection debate in Europe

part IV|65 pages

Tracking alternatives to the neoliberal agenda

chapter 18|12 pages

The commons as organizing infrastructure

Indigenous collaborations and post-neoliberal visions in Ecuador

chapter 20|11 pages

Gerontocracies of affect

How the “politics of austerity” have reshaped elder environmental radicalism

chapter 21|15 pages

Humans in the landscape

Low-impact development as a response to the neoliberal environmental agenda

chapter |11 pages

Afterword

The right to nature: lessons learned and future directions